Malone sneezed and said, “You’re not here. You’re in a hospital. You’re an illusion. Go away. Vanish. Scat!”
Jerry Kane laughed.
“And you, Kane,” Malone said, breathing hard. “How did you get in here?”
“We came in through the back door,” Kane said. “Very easy, since it’s our own house.”
“Our—?” the little lawyer exploded.
He glared at Jerry Kane. The gambler, racketeer, night club owner, and promoter was a big, rangy, yet strangely graceful man. His tanned face could be hard as nails, or it could be ingratiatingly friendly and smiling, and it had an old scar down one cheek. His business deals had always kept him inside the law — but just inside. He owned the night club in which Doris Dawn sang. His reputation with women was worse than Malone’s.
The other occupants of the room had been momentarily struck speechless. Now, everyone spoke at once. All questions. All the same questions.
“I discovered,” Doris Dawn said, “I had to get out of that hospital. I had to. Because there was a chance to find out — something. It was very easy, really. I bribed a nurse to call Jerry. He bribed the policeman by my door to go away. And he brought me a nurse’s uniform, and all I had to do was put it on and walk out.”
“And,” the big man said, “before coming here we drove across the state line and were married. Meet Mrs. Kane.”
Young Bob Spencer cried, “Doris—!” in an anguished voice.
“You fool!” Jack Apt said.
She paid no attention. “This time, no one’s going to stop me — finding out. It would be better, honestly, if you all just waited here for me.” Suddenly a little gun flashed in her hand. “But don’t try to stop me.”
“Doris... baby—” Jerry Kane gasped. And then, “How the hell did you get my gun?”
“I took it out of your pocket,” she said calmly. Her white little face was hard as ice. “If anyone tries to stop me or follow me, I’ll shoot. No matter who. Even if it’s Jerry, and I love Jerry. I always have.” Suddenly she was gone.
Before anyone could move, little Jack Apt said, “Too bad you married her, Kane. Because she isn’t going to inherit the money after all.”
Kane swore bitterly and raced for the door. Suddenly everyone in the room was racing for the door. Malone caught up, out on the sidewalk, just as a car roared away down the street. Kane’s car. With Doris driving. Other cars roared away. Bob Spencer’s roadster. Two police cars.
The little lawyer stood shivering. They’d never catch up with that car of Kane’s, not even the squad car would. And here he was stranded, and only he knew where she was going.
Not a taxi in sight. None nearer than Chicago Avenue.
Chicago Avenue — a sudden thought struck him, he wheeled around and sprinted down the street. One block to State Street, three blocks to Chicago Avenue. He made it to the safety zone just as an east bound streetcar came clanging through the rain.
“Wet night,” the conductor commented.
“Going to be wetter,” Malone prophesied gloomily. He dropped the remaining nickel in the coin box and began searching his pockets for an imaginary two pennies. The streetcar had reached the turn into Lakeshore Drive when Malone found the telephone slug, handed it triumphantly to the conductor for change and was properly surprised and crestfallen when it was returned to him. He continued to search for the pennies right up to the moment when the now empty streetcar came to an abrupt halt at the end of the line.
“Guess I’ll have to put you off here,” the conductor said. “No fare, no ride.”
Malone glanced through the window, saw the familiar outlines of Navy Pier, and said, “Only the brave deserve the fair.” He reached into his vest pocket and said, “Have a cigar.”
Jerry Kane’s custom-built convertible was parked at the entrance to the pier. There were no other cars in sight. Malone sighed. This was something he was going to have to handle by himself.
He knew exactly where to go. Up the stairs on the left-hand side of the pier, and along the promenade. Dark and deserted now, and desolate in the rain. There was one certain point, just beyond the line of benches — he stared ahead through the wet blackness and saw no sign of a girl in a nurse’s uniform. He began to run.
He reached the spot from which Diana Dawn had leaped to her death, years before, and looked over the railing. There was a blob of white on the black water. Malone peeled off his overcoat, kicked off his shoes, and jumped.
The water was icy cold. He caught his breath after one terrible moment, and swam in the direction of the white blob.
She was alive. She was struggling against the water. That gave him new strength. He held her head up for a minute and, by some miracle, managed to rid her of the dark mink coat that was pulling her down.
A boat was coming. A tiny canoe, dark against the darkness. Malone aimed for it, helping her. An oar came out from the canoe, and pushed — down.
There was a brief agony of being underwater and an even briefer remembrance of all the things that had made living so much fun. An almost unbearable roaring in his ears as he rose to the surface still holding her. A light that almost blinded him as he breathed air again.
A voice said, “Catch ’em before they go down again.” Strong hands reached out and caught him by the armpits. One quick motion, and he was hauled into the motor boat that had made the almost unbearable roaring and had flashed its light in his face.
He longed to collapse into unconsciousness there on the deck, but first — he looked, and saw that she had been hauled on board, and was breathing. Then he managed, with his last strength, to point at the canoe.
He heard a shot. He pulled himself up enough to look over the edge of the boat. He saw the canoe, overturned, starting to settle and sink.
“You might have known I’d commandeer a shore boat,” Jerry Kane said. “I knew where she’d go. After all, I’ve been in love with her for a long time.”
Malone lay back against the set boards, thought the whole thing over, and finally said, “You know, I think I am getting a cold after all.”
In the emergency room on the pier, Lt. von Flanagan agreed that it was a shame young Bob Spencer — such a promising young actor, too — had perished in an attempt to rescue one of Chicago’s favorite radio and stage entertainers, Miss Doris Dawn. Fortunately, Mr. Jerry Kane had come along in time to rescue Miss Dawn and Mr. John Joseph Malone, prominent Chicago attorney.
After the reporters and Doris Dawn and her new husband had gone, he said, “All right, Malone, what the hell happened?”
Malone snuggled into the blanket some kind soul had wrapped around him, sneezed, and said, “If Doris Dawn died, and the body of Robert Spencer were found, Robert Spencer’s heir would inherit several million dollars. Bob Spencer, naturally, was the only heir. Being a young man of imagination, he decided it would be better for her to commit suicide than to be murdered in some ordinary way. There wouldn’t be so many embarassing questions asked of the one person to benefit by her death.”
He paused, sneezed twice, and went on, “But he also knew that it wasn’t easy to make murder look like suicide. Especially to—” he paused again for a second or two — “very smart cops like von Flanagan here. Therefore, his prospective victim had to make several unsuccessful attempts at suicide.” He sneezed once more. “My grandmother always said whiskey was the best thing to ward off a cold. Oh, thanks, pal. Very kind of you.”
“I would of believed it,” von Flanagan said slowly. “In fact, after those first coupla’ tries — I mean, what looked like tries — if she’d of fell off that window ledge, with ‘Goodbye, goodbye’ wrote all over the mirrors, I’d of said suicide. And then when it looked like she jumped off of the pier, right at the place where her old lady jumped off years ago, after finding her step-pa’s body and figuring out her old lady must of bumped him off and buried him there, and with her leaving a note saying right where he was—” He stopped, ran a handkerchief over his broad red face and said, “You know what I mean.”